


Talking Shop

by 51stCenturyFox



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-29
Updated: 2012-02-29
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/pseuds/51stCenturyFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jack told me about you. Said you're brilliant. Didn't mention sneaky. Does he know you're sneaky? "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talking Shop

**Author's Note:**

> For bluejeanius from a prompt about the glasses... (In this story, Tosh and Ten are both wearing their sexy, sexy glasses!) 
> 
> Takes place sometime during TW series 2.
> 
> Beta: neifile7 and misswinterhill Thanks to amand_r for the title!

Toshiko folded her arms and cocked a hip against the wall, waiting. This was the spot, and the readings echoed those from two previous visits, matched against the timestamps on videos of the Plass. So any minute now...

She gazed up, watched a v-shaped flock of birds heading southward, and then there it was - that _sound_ \- the wheezing of a ripped bellows mixed with ancient cranks and some sort of random, foreign _ping_. A blue police box materialised before her. She smirked and stepped forward, then looked around her before pausing outside the box. No sign of Jack running for it this time, but of course he was in Ebbw Vale checking out a surge of strong Rift energy, along with everyone else. Everyone but Tosh, as luck would have it.

Yes, that was quite the coincidence.

She rapped on the blue wood hesitantly and tilted her head to listen. Nothing. So she knocked louder. The door swung open and a tall figure in trainers, a deep brown pinstriped suit and a long coat stepped out and shut the door behind him. He regarded her silently.

"Hello," Tosh squeaked, and then cleared her throat. "Hello," she repeated, more forcefully. "Doctor-"

"You've been waiting for me."

"Yes, and-"

"You knew I would arrive at this moment."

"I. Yes."

"Because..."

"Because I calculated when you'd arrive in for refuelling, based on previous-" Tosh held up a battered piece of A4 and the man plucked it from her fingertips swiftly. "Ow!" Tosh glared at the minute line of blood on her index finger. "Paper cut."

The man made a quick wincy face in empathy and then focussed intently on the piece of paper. Tosh stuck the tip of her finger into her mouth.

"You calculated this... on paper?"

She nodded, then shook her head. "No, actually. I calculated it in my head. I confirmed it on paper. We've got advanced computing capabilities, of course, but nothing beats-"

"Oh. Oh! Toshiko Sato!" The Doctor snapped his fingers. "We met in London, I remember now. Space pigs! You're not pretending to be a medical doctor again, are you?"

"Ah." Tosh smiled. "Well... that was an assignment."

"No, I know. Jack know you're here, talking to me?"

Tosh gave her fingertip another surreptitious lick. "No. He and the rest of the team are on a mission. Won't be back for a few hours."

" _Yes!_ Jack told me about you. Said you're brilliant. Didn't mention sneaky. Does he know you're sneaky? 'Course he knows, what am I saying? Hired you on at Torchwood, didn't he?"

"I-" she began again.

"So, why were you waiting for me to arrive, at a time when none of your colleagues are around?"

"I was hoping, er..."

"Not taking on any hitchhikers at the moment, sorry to say."

Tosh rolled her eyes. He wouldn't let her _talk_. "I just wanted to see your power plant. The engine behind this thing." She poked at the blue door. "And the computer?"

"It's not technically a computer, as such," the Doctor advised her, pushing his glasses upward on his nose. "Bit too advanced to really explain, even if you're brilliant."

Tosh squinted at him.

"Well, all right," the Doctor huffed, grabbing her hand and pulling her away. "Come on, then. Need to pick up something absolutely critical first."

Tosh's fringe flew as she glanced back at the blue box. "But-"

"This way!" The Doctor barked over his shoulder, and she rushed to keep him from dragging her by her toes as he lengthened his stride. Perhaps he wanted to pick up a new torque gun or MPUs or actinium or modelling clay, or whatever things an intergalactic traveller needed.

They reached a corner, turned left, strode towards another, turned right, and Tosh nearly ate the wool of his long brown coat when he pulled to an abrupt halt in front of a building and freed her hand. She looked up. "This is a bakery."

"I know," the Doctor nodded. "Best cream cakes in four galaxies."

"Cream cakes..." she trailed off, but ducked under his arm as he opened the door for her with a grin. She inhaled; it did smell heavenly inside. "So, cream cakes are crucial to the operation of-"

"Shh. Spies everywhere!" he hissed, and Tosh flicked a glance around them. "Oh, not _really_. I just love saying that."

Tosh blew the hair out of her eyes as the Doctor placed an order, and he took her elbow, steering her, as they alighted from the shop, box in his other hand.

"Let's eat these in the park, shall we?" he asked as they approached a shady patch of green. Tosh glanced at her watch. "In a rush?"

"I shouldn't be away from the Rift monitor for too long. And I was hoping I'd have time to see your ship," Tosh replied.

The Doctor laughed. "You have all the time in the world. And out of it. Don't worry about that."

"Oh. I... okay." They came to a spot beneath a tree and the Doctor flipped off his coat and spread it on the grass, lining up, then dropped to his knees.

"Cream cake?"

She nodded and accepted the tissue-paper-wrapped miniature cake, and decided to sit. Why not?

*

He'd brushed away most of her questions, insisted on stopping for a styrofoam cup of tea, and finally steered her back along two alleyways (nice shortcuts, she'd keep those in mind when she went back for more cream cakes, which she definitely would do) and they arrived back at the blue box, still sitting undisturbed between the back of a restaurant under construction and a brimming skip. The Doctor made a gallant half-bow gesture and ushered her into the box.

Tosh paused after coming over the threshold. "Oh. Oh! It's-"

"Go on," the Doctor smirked. "Everyone says it."

"It's an entirely different dimension on the inside!" Tosh blurted. She ran her hand along a strut support for the ceiling which looked like coral and felt almost _alive_. She shivered.

The Doctor coughed. "Yes, that's it exactly."

"It's holomorphic at point z0!"

"Correct! And differentiable at z0, but _also_ differentiable everywhere within the neighborhood of z0 -"

"-in the complex plane," they finished together. Tosh ran to the centre of the TARDIS.

"The power source?" She asked.

"I'll show you." The Doctor extended a hand again and Tosh took it. His hands were nice. Soft but not too soft. Dry but not too dry. He didn't feel particularly alien. A bit cool to the touch, but not _vampire cool_. Tosh giggled and the Doctor gave her a questioning look as they descended a staircase. She shook her head.

"Here we are!"A panel slid back and they were in a huge room, full of thick, upward-pointing green-lit objects that resembled laser stalagmites, reaching to what seemed like infinite _up_. "This is where the magic happens..." The Doctor continued with a detailed technical explanation, and Tosh itched to take notes. She had a pencil in the pocket of her coat, and a tiny dogeared notebook, but if she reached for them, she might put the Doctor off his explanatory stride. And she'd have to let go of his hand, which still clutched hers and squeezed every once in a while when he made a particularly salient point.

Perhaps he could provide specs later. She'd brought her thumb drive, though there didn't seem to be any ports where she could actually... stick it.

Still it was rewarding to see the Doctor's eyes light up when she challenged him over the possible effects of quantum vacuum blowup on the spacetime continuum. As if she could forget that. Tosh smiled. He smiled back. Tosh felt herself flush, just a bit.

"Another question; it's about the Copernicus model. If we're just another planet circling another star, why are you here?"

"Why are any of us here?"

"I mean, why do you come here?" Tosh persisted. "But that's part of it, isn't it? You can be anywhere, anytime. What makes Earth so special?"

"That question doesn't have an answer," the Doctor said. "Why aren't you at your Rift monitor right now?"

"Mmm," Tosh replied. "Because I wanted to talk to you."

"Likewise."

They tromped back upstairs and doffed their coats, the TARDIS being a very comfortable room temperature, and the Doctor indulged her curiosity about the main controls, more technical queries about intergalactic time travel (and its stresses on the craft.) Some of the answers were... scientifically unsatisfactory, and based on Time Lord lore, which sounded a bit like fairy tales to Tosh, but there it was.

"So. You're the last of your kind," Tosh stated, during a rare pause. Good god, he could talk and talk. It was all fascinating, but Tosh was an asker of questions. It had seemed too rude to interrupt by raising her hand.

"I am," the Doctor replied. "The very last."

"Your physiology seems human," she said. "I mean, no one would ever know you were different, compared to some of the aliens I've been in contact with. We always say we get the real winners in Cardiff, though."

"Wellll, the Rift," the Doctor answered. "You really don't find the aliens who seem human, do you? I mean, you don't find them, because they blend in."

Tosh flashed to Mary and swallowed hard. "Sometimes. Sometimes they seem... more than human, but they're really monsters."

The Doctor, facing her, captured her hands. He lifted them to his neck, and placed her fingers there. "Feel. Feel my pulse." Tosh slid her fingertips to the left side of the Doctor's jawline, and picked up the beat of his heart. "Now the other side." Tosh tilted her head with an unspoken question, but moved her other hand to the same position, and felt another, beating in a different but complementary rhythm.

"Two hearts. More than human, and sometimes less. But not a monster, most of the time," the Doctor said. His dark eyes were kind. He had a bit of a five o' clock shadow, and he smelled... fantastic really, like the room downstairs and ozone and peppermint and something else. Something different to everything. Time, maybe.

"No, you're not a monster," Tosh whispered. The Doctor leaned in closer, very close indeed, parting his lips, and Tosh began to close her eyes. Then he licked her glasses.

He _licked. Her glasses._

She blinked, fingers still pressed to his jawline. He regarded her in the glow from the Type 40 upgraded time column and she thought she must look utterly confused, not least because no one had ever licked her glasses before, and it was oddly hot, as well as being deeply, deeply weird.

"Icing," the Doctor said softly. "From the cream cakes." He removed her glasses, very quickly, and tucked them into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, behind the handkerchief. Then, his fingertips found her temples and he _thought_ at her, and she realised that she didn't need her notebook after all. And that he realised she was regretting not having taken notes. And then she saw what else he was thinking.

"Oh," was all Tosh had time to say, before his lips met hers and she tasted the icing, so he wasn't a lying alien, at least. Point in his favour, considering. The other point was that he had an amazing tongue. Yes, this was a bit more than human kissing. Her fingers crept around the back of his neck as a kind of reply, and he gripped her shoulders and kissed her fiercely. They shifted and turned, and Tosh felt the raw edge of the control console bite into her back. She stopped minding, however, when the Doctor began to unbutton the silky lilac blouse she wore and kiss his way downward, just before he hefted her onto the console itself. She tipped her head back and stared upward at the pulsing green blur of the centre column as the Doctor proved how good he was with his tongue once again. And his hands, and well.

This was definitely climbing the ranks of Tosh's favourite alien encounters ever. (She kept a very detailed list.)

*

"Toshiko!" came a call through her comm.

"Uh huh?" she answered breathlessly, rushing down the street towards the Hub.

"There's nothing out here. Can you check your readings again?" Jack asked tersely.

"I just did. The Rift wave has vanished. Looked like a bit of a cosmic burp on the monitors." A lorry's horn sounded as she dashed across the road. "Sorry about the noise. Popped out to... get something." _Laid by a Time Lord_ hadn't been part of what she'd planned to get but stranger things had... well, no, in fact, stranger things had not actually happened to Tosh, but it was a sliding scale, really. Once at university she'd guessed that a passing motorbike was travelling at a 28-degree incline and really impressed her mates by being intuitively correct but hmm, no, different league entirely.

"Wild fucking goose chase!" Owen complained in the background.

"Pretty good shops out here, though," Jack replied. "Ianto's buying a tie and Gwen's gone into some gift shop to pick out something for her mother's birthday." Tosh glanced to the side as she crossed another road, and spied a bit of smear on the edge of her glasses lens. Her mouth quirked.

"Bloody waste of time," Owen muttered in her ear.

"Oh shut up, Owen," Jack said. "We'll be on our way back, I guess."

"See you all soon," Tosh replied, closing her comms just as she reached the door to the Tourist Office and pulled out the key, the key right next to the oddly-shaped one she'd just been given, and grinned.

She'd relish calculating the next visit, down to the minute.


End file.
